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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28795110">nothing like him (and maybe that's okay)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/offarawaysandfuturedays_inmydreams/pseuds/offarawaysandfuturedays_inmydreams'>offarawaysandfuturedays_inmydreams</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Next to Normal - Kitt/Yorkey</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>genuinely not sure if i should tag for major character death, i mean. it's next to normal, so everyone you expect to be dead. is already dead, tagged teen and up because it touches on diana's attempt</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 08:54:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,958</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28795110</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/offarawaysandfuturedays_inmydreams/pseuds/offarawaysandfuturedays_inmydreams</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“She’s certainly not Gabe.” That’s the sentence Natalie Goodman has heard the most in her life, probably more than her own name or even “I love you.” She’s heard it a thousand ways from a hundred different people, or so she’d guess if anyone ever asked.</p><p>my take on how Natalie might feel about Gabe looming over her relationship with life</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>nothing like him (and maybe that's okay)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I haven't written fic in years, but I got hit by the urge to write for Next to Normal, so here's my attempt to get back into writing and actually posting</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“She’s certainly not Gabe.” That’s the sentence Natalie Goodman has heard the most in her life, probably more than her own name or even “I love you.” She’s heard it a thousand ways from a hundred different people, or so she’d guess if anyone ever asked.</p><p>“You’re certainly not Gabe,” Diana says, staring at a spot on the wall half a foot above five-year-old Natalie’s head when she comes in, scraped up from playing with the neighbours. (Natalie’s certain she’s actually talking to Gabe. Not that she’s supposed to have guessed this, but she’s smarter than anyone will give her credit for.)</p><p>“No, you’re not Gabe,” Dan tells her on the same day every year, no small amount of relief in his voice. (She’ll learn later, much later, that this is always brought on by some reminder that it’s the anniversary of <em>the day</em>. When she does, her first reaction will be that this is a dumb thing to tell her, she's <em>obviously </em>not him. Her second reaction will be the realisation that Gabe has some superpower that puts him, or rather his spectre, first in their parents' minds.)</p><p>“Oh, no, nothing at all like Gabe,” her doctors note on her forms, year after year, even after she's months and years older than her brother was or will ever be. They only stop when she gets to middle school and it would’ve stopped mattering how much she was like her brother. (She’s still not sure why they wrote that for so many years; maybe they thought it would help her mother somehow. As far as Natalie's concerned, it didn’t make a difference. Diana's always been more interested in Gabe's hypothetical growth than her own real growth.)</p><p>“She was so different from her brother,” the daycare centre she attended wrote to her parents in the “graduation” package they sent home with her on her last day. (How would they know, she wonders, when Gabe never finished daycare. At three, she'd hope she was different from herself at six months old, much less from her brother at whatever ages they knew him.)</p><p>Natalie thought it would be over, she’d be done with hearing about how she “isn’t like Gabe” when she hits high school, over the hurdles of middle school, barely having kept her dead brother and her mother’s hallucinations of him out of the rumour mill. Somehow, <em>somehow</em>, her mother makes it to the first high school recital, tries to participate, and (worst of all) makes it irrefutably clear that she’s related to Natalie.</p><p>(Somewhere, deep in the back of her mind, Natalie wonders if her mother’s hallucination of Gabe plays some instrument, and if this is another area where she’ll never live up to her dead brother. She hates herself for thinking it, hates the moment that music, this one little thing that was <em>hers</em>, inexplicably becomes <strong>theirs</strong>.)</p><p>(She refuses her father’s offer to come pick her up after driving her mother back and instead walks the five miles home in her concert heels, knowing she’ll have blisters but preferring them to another moment with either of her parents and the tension they won't talk about.)</p><p>And then she meets Henry. Sweet, environmentally-obsessed Henry, who doesn’t have the slightest clue who her dead brother is. If Natalie had had her way, he’d have never found out about Gabe and they could’ve made it out, to college or wherever, and never looked back. But her father had to invite him to dinner, it had to be Gabe’s birthday, and her mother had to have made him a cake.</p><p>“Wait, his name was Gabe...<em>oh</em>,” Henry says after she chokes out the story between angry sobs in the woods behind school. She'd rushed him out of the house and pushed him into the car and told him to "<em>drive, anywhere, just drive</em>." And now he's putting together the pieces, finally. Why Natalie hated playing house during recess in first grade. Why she hated projects about family, would never invite either parent to middle school career day. Why she cringed when that kid named Gabe transferred to their school in ninth grade, when he promptly caught up to her academically in sophomore year and all their teachers would compare them in every subject. (Henry’s in love with Natalie, always has been, <em>of course</em> he’s noticed those little things. Never understood them, though. Until now.)</p><p>“Every time I hear that name, it just reminds me of my dead brother who no one can let go. All I ever hear is how I’m not like him,” she mutters, kicking a rock. Henry scoffs and she glances up to see him trying to avoid direct eye contact and unsuccessfully hiding a faint flush behind his long-ish hair.</p><p>“I’m sure you’re better than him,” he gets out, “for one, you’re...here and real.” Somehow, this boy she’s known-but-not-known since kindergarten, who she’s only been dating for a few weeks, knows exactly what to say when no one else has for sixteen years.</p><p>Months go by, edging closer to an early graduation, maybe her first, last, and only school dance with the boy who never says her brother’s name but does blurt out “I love you” often enough that Natalie can replay it to herself when things go wrong at home, as they so often do.</p><p>And then they find her mother in the bathroom, take her to so, so many rounds of shock therapy, bring her home time and again, and try to jog her memory. For the briefest moment, Natalie can’t help but be selfishly glad that her mother can’t remember anything at all. Forgetting Natalie means she’s forgotten Gabe, after all, and only one of them is still here, in front of Diana.</p><p>He comes back, though, like he always does. Back to having their invisible fourth family member (is it her or Gabe, Natalie still doesn’t know, and maybe she never truly will). Her father walks around like he’ll shatter at any moment, her mother like she already has.</p><p>“Nothing like Gabe,” Dan mutters, watching Natalie storm in from trying again to tell Henry “<em>it’s over, we’re done</em>” when all she wants to do is hold on tight and never let him go. (Is she, at sixteen, getting compared to a months-old child, or does her father also have some secret image of teenage Gabe and his dating life, Natalie can't help but muse under all her flying emotions.)</p><p>“She’s not Gabe,” Diana sighs over breakfast as Natalie flips through piano scores with one hand and through flyers for weekend parties with the other. (It’s sad, Natalie thinks, that her mother is more obsessed with possible underage drinking from her dead son than from her living daughter.)</p><p>“Natalie isn’t Gabe,” she hears through the door at the end of one of her mother’s therapy sessions. She isn’t meant to hear it, barely wants to be here, but her father has dragged her with him to pick up her mother, thinking they can try and set up family therapy sessions. Dr. whatever-his-name-is says no, though, Diana isn’t ready (will she ever be, Natalie wonders).</p><p>And then, a week later, her mother barrels through the kitchen, snatching the keys off the hook by the back door, and driving away before Natalie can even swallow the sip of coffee she’s just taken. Concerned, she calls her father; her mother hasn't driven since the ill-fated recital.</p><p>Dan sighs when she explains. “You really aren’t your brother,” are the first words out of his mouth (what’s that got to do with anything, she thinks for the millionth time, he's the reason everything went wrong and I'm the reason anything goes right). “Just...she’s gone to her therapist’s office, that’s where she always goes. If she’s not back in a few hours, call me again.” He hangs up before she can answer.</p><p>(“You’re certainly not Gabe,” Natalie thinks at her father. At least hallucination Gabe probably cares about their, <em>her</em>, mother in some twisted way. Warped and dangerous (not to mention quite literally unreal), to be sure, but it’s better than this odd passiveness her father has had lately.)</p><p>The door slams open again and her mother is there, looking exhausted, yet more put together than Natalie can ever remember seeing her.</p><p>“You’re not Gabe,” her mother says, and Natalie winces, “and I know you never will be.” She stares at her mother, shocked by this addition to the refrain that’s punctuated every important moment of her life.</p><p>“I know you’re not him, I know your life hasn’t been normal, despite what your father and I wanted for you,” Diana whispers, letting out a soft sob at the end. Natalie’s heart crumbles in ways she never thought it could for her mother, never thought it could at all, and maybe, just maybe, not being like Gabe is a good thing. Like Henry said all those months ago, Natalie is here and <em>real</em>, and can still feel.</p><p>She clears her throat, surprised that it’s gotten choked up without her noticing, and hesitantly reaches out to her mother. “I...I’ve never wanted normal, we never will be, but...something next to normal might just be alright,” she says, closing the final steps to her mother.</p><p>Her mother sobs then, truly cries, and Natalie realises this is the most genuine, non-angry emotion they’ve ever shown one another. Then, suddenly, her mother’s shoving her into the dress she bought months ago, somehow there’s make-up on her face, and Natalie's shoved back into the car (worries about her mother's driving have suddenly disappeared, she finds). Then she's face-to-face with Henry, whose suit matches her dress impossibly perfectly. Her mother waves goodbye and turns the car to go.</p><p>Henry grins that lopsided grin she loves but has only ever half-noticed before and offers her his arm. Natalie lets him lead her towards the school gym but pulls him aside a split second before they enter.</p><p>“What if I turn into my mother one day?” she asks. He pulls her into his side, “You’re not your brother and you’re not your mother. But I’ll stick <em>it</em>, whatever <em>it</em> is, out with you. I promise.” And he gives her that look through his curtain of hair, the one that feels so genuine that she can’t help but believe whatever he says, and lets him lead her into the only high school dance she ever plans to attend.</p><p>Hours later, Natalie gets home to her father staring into the distance like her mother used to do. Her mother is gone, it would seem, the only trace a note left on the kitchen table, promising to keep in touch with her. There's another note, one to her father, that's too crumpled now to read, but Natalie can make out "<em>had to go</em>" and knows it's the only way for either of her parents to ever move on.</p><p>Dan looks lost, so lost, and all he can whisper when Natalie kneels down in front of him is “Gabe?” She bites her lip to keep from crying; no one, not even her father, realised how little anyone had worked through anything related to Gabe, she sees now. But now it’s just her and her father, her mother gone to figure herself out without the restraints of her past life and past self and so:</p><p>“No, Dad, I’m not Gabe. It’s me, Natalie,” she whispers. And, as he start to feel his own grief like he never could, never <em>would</em> in front of her mother, Natalie thinks that they've all been holding on too long. They've never been <em>normal </em>(they probably never will be), that's clear, but they'll figure it out. Diana and Dan and <em>Natalie</em>, not "not Gabe," but <em>Natalie</em>.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Kudos/comments much appreciated and I'm on tumblr at offarawaysnfuturedays-inmydreams if you want to come yell about German musicals (because apparently that is the source of all my writing inspiration)!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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